Opinion Pieces - Immigration detention laws need reviewing (2008)

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Immigration detention laws need reviewing

Author: Graeme Innes AM, Human Rights Commissioner

Publication: The Newcastle Herald on 17 January 2008.

Over four months at the end of last year I travelled around Australia visiting and inspecting our mainland Immigration detention facilities.

This is an often depressing tour that we at the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) undertake every year to monitor the conditions of immigration detention in Australia for compliance with internationally recognised human rights obligations. We tour and inspect the facilities, interview the staff and meet with the detainees themselves.

The largest of these facilities is the Villawood Detention Centre located in western Sydney, 25 kilometres from the central business district. Just before we visited Villawood, there were 231 people detained there, 77 of whom had been there for longer than one year.

It is important to remember that these facilities are not jails. People in them are detained as part of Australia’s immigration policies, for administrative purposes only. They have not been charged with any crime.

So imagine you have left a country in turmoil, seeking refuge from a place where human rights have no value.

You are put in a detention centre when you reach Australia, a country that respects human rights. You have not committed any crime, so you don’t know why you are being detained.

You are not given any avenue to challenge your detention and you are not told how long you will be there.

You keep thinking you will be released any day now, but time drags on and it doesn’t happen.

Tedium and boredom are your constant companions.

How long would it be before your mind started to drift and you started to suffer from frustration, anger and depression?

You constantly wonder why you have been incarcerated.

As Human Rights Commissioner, this was a common question that I was asked when I and my colleagues met with detainees during inspections.

One of our greatest concerns in the past has been the poor, jail-like conditions of the centres and the poor attitude of many staff members toward the detainees.

This year it was clear that effort has been put into improving the physical environment in which detainees are kept. Some facilities have even implemented initiatives designed to lessen the physical, intellectual and emotional burden for those in detention - such as the external excursion program at the Northern Immigration Detention Centre in Darwin.

Further, most detainees we spoke to generally had no complaint about their treatment by detention staff.

Yet, despite efforts to improve the environment in our detention facilities, the fundamental problem with immigration detention has not changed. That is the length of detention and the uncertainty about how much longer that detention will last.

Many detainees we spoke to expressed extreme frustration about the length of time they had been detained, and our discussions with mental health teams confirmed that this uncertainty and the length of detention inevitably leads to mental health problems.

It remains HREOC’s position that Australia’s immigration detention laws should be reviewed. Just as a person who is charged with a crime can apply for bail, these people should have the right to challenge their detention and should not be detained indefinitely.

However, until this happens there are options that our report recommends that can go a long way toward lessening the physical and mental stress of detention. Many of the centres have already implemented some of these reforms.

Last year we recommended that Stage 1 of Villawood, the most disgraceful and jail-like of all the facilities, be demolished. In the absence of improvements, that is still our recommendation.

Australia’s new government has the chance to turn a page and ensure that our immigration laws and immigration detention centres treat all people with humanity, dignity, compassion and respect. Implementation of the recommendations of our report would be the perfect place to begin.

Graeme Innes is Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner.